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<^ '^^ sF* A 







A SERMON 



ON THE 



DEATH OF DANIEL WEBSTER, 



BY 



REV. ANDREW L. STONE. 



SERMON 



PREACHED IN PARK STREET CHURCH, 



ON 



THE SUNDAY SUCCEEDING THE 



DEATH OF DANIEL WEBSTER. 



BY 

REV. ANDREW L. STONE. 

'I 



BOSTON: 
TICKNOR, REED, AND FIELDS. 

MDCCCLIII. 



-^ ^ 













THCnSTON. TOIIRY, AND KMERSON, PHINTERS. 



Boston, Ftbruarij 11, 1853. 
Reverend and dear Sir, 

Having listened with great interest and pleasure, to the beautiful 
Sermon delivered by you on the occasion of the Death of Mr. Webster, 
and believing that its perusal will gratify many who had not that pleas- 
ure, I have taken the liberty of asking, as a personal favor, that you 
will allow me to publish it. 

Most truly, your friend, 

Peter Harvev. 

Rev. A. L. Stone. 



Boston, February 12, 1853. 
My dear Sir, 
I believe I can truly sympathize with you in the great National be- 
reavement, which was to you, in your intimate and atlectionate relations 
to the deceased, so near and personal a loss ; and if it shall be to you 
any expression of such a sympathy, 1 cheerfully submit to your dispo- 
sal a copy of the Discourse for which you ask. 

Very truly and affectionately, your Friend and Pastor, 

A. L. Stone. 
Peter Har^^ey, Esq. 



SERMON. 



ECCLESIASTES, XII. 5. 

• • • ■ ' BECAUSE MAN GOETH TO HIS LONG HOME, AND THK MOURNERS 

GO ABOUT THE STREETS.' 

The livery of sorrow which our city has put on, 
now a week ago ; the funereal sadness that shades 
every face, and hangs like low-drooping clouds over 
all the haunts of men, the offices of state, the 
marts of trade, the scenes of public concourse; the 
emblems of universal mourning that greet the eye 
at every turn, column and arch draped with sable 
grief; the flags of all political parties dressed in 
badges of bereavement ; the national banner on 
ship and tower and dome, floating at half-mast 
height, as though conscious that the strong right 
arm which held it aloft on land and sea, before 
the kingdoms and powers of earth, were stricken 
now ; the echoes of those booming guns, giving 
out in slow pulsations from all our hills and plains 
the mighty throbs of the common sorrow ; the one 
burdened feeling of every heart, and the event that 



I 



6 



lies central amid the solemn surroundings of these 
touching and expressive demonstrations ; suggest 
the Scripture and the theme of our meditation this 
hour. God has spoken to the 2)eople — to the 
NATIONS. We mai/ not, if we would, keep the 
utterance of that voice, just as divine in Providence, 
as in the Word, from the courts of our temples. 
We cannot close our sanctuary doors against the 
entrance of such a public grief — as well try to 
shut the atmosphere without. These two deaths, 
one on either shore of the Atlantic, the one of 
the mightiest warrior, the other of the greatest 
statesman of the age, ought to hold us in arrest 
for awhile, that we may lay to heart the lessons 
they were commissioned of Heaven to teach. 

Amid the impressions of such scenes, our advan- 
tage is great and special, for interpreting and under- 
standing the full significance of the line I have taken 
from sacred writ : ' Man goeth to his long home, and 
the mourners go about the streets.' 

It was wise for the royal preacher whose text was, 
' Vanity of vanities — all is vanity,' to close his ser- 
mon by leading his audience into the presence of 
Death, and making those dumb lips of the mighty 
Teacher repeat after him, 'All is vanity.' In the 
same solemn presence, coming from the midst of busy 
life, we may learn the lesson of the emptiness of 
earthly riches, pleasures and honors, and by the 
closest links of association send our thought forward, 
— from these perishing temporal things, these fieeting 



semblances of time, to the enduring and indestructible 
realities — to the long final home of man. 

Our theme may be unfolded by remarking, First, 
that this world is not our home. It is our birthplace, 
where our eyes first opened to the light of life — 
where our first articulate cry of human weakness 
struck the key-note of all earthly histories — where 
the unfledged spirit was nestled and brooded, waiting- 
till its pinions should be plumed and nerved ; but it 
is not our home. It is our cradle, where our infancy 
is rocked awhile, and has its fitful sleep, and grows 
restless for newer toys, and claps its hands at tinselled 
splendors, and lifts its little arm against the love that 
is tenderest. It is our childliood's garden spot, where 
we blow our bubbles, and admire their iris hues, and 
see them break and end in nothing ; where we build 
our mimic castles, and see them topple over ; and 
launch our mimic skiffs, and see them founder ; and 
shout awhile to the call of merry mates, soon sum- 
moned home. It is our school, where we spell out 
laboriously the alphabet of knowledge ; and on our 
little stage make our bow and speak our piece, and 
count our ticket of reward a wondrous prize ; and 
climb tall trees for fruit that blushes on the topmost 
bough, and fall in climbing ; or scale the rough cliffs 
to rob the parent bird, and get more bruises than 
eggs ; and think more of holidays and vacations than 
of all the wisdom to be mastered. And we may vary 
the imagery as we will, we cannot make the spot a 
home. We have here no continuing city, none 



abiding-place. The present is a scene of trial, of 
training, and culture and discipline ; we grapple with 
many a difficult problem, we essay many a perilous 
adventure ; plan and toil and sometimes win, and 
oftener are baffled, then the — end. This life is to our 
true range of being, but as the fountain to the stream, 
the place where it rises. The stream cannot linger 
by the mountain-spring, where it first bubbles up ; 
it flows on down the valleys, and away across the 
plains, and returning no more, loses itself in the 
great sea. So earth is our natal spot, our cradle, our 
elemental school, the scene of youthful pastimes, and 
youthful competition and boyish triumphs ; but the 
stream of life flows on, deepening and widening, the 
fountain is left behind forever — out there is the 
ocean. Is this so simple and obvious a truth 1 Look 
around, and see if you can make it by the sight of the 
eye a reality ! How we plan ! how we toil ! how we 
build ! how we store house and garner, ' much goods 
for many years !' We rear the walls of our man- 
sions, massive and strong, that they may endure ; 
forgetting how soon this frail tabernacle of clay will 
crumble down. We plant trees of shade, whose 
stages of growth are centuries, forgetting how soon 
we shall enter the shade of the valley. We All 
nursery and orchard with fruit-bearing scions, whose 
golden bounty shall never ripen for us, but drop into 
the lap of our grand-children. We spend the noon 
of our strength in heaping up riches, as though after 
that life of toil we could take out a new lease and 



enter upon a life of ease and enjoyment. All these 
walks of busy labor around us express, not our sense 
of the frailty and brevity of life, but seem to look 
forward as to patriarchal years. And even if that 
amazing lifetime of the fathers of the race were to be 
reproduced, and men were to live a thousand years 
as before the flood, still from the lips of an age so 
venerable should we hear the confession, 'Few, few, 
and evil are the days of the years of our pilgrimage.' 
And there is no more touching record of human 
mortality, than that same chapter of the first book of 
Moses, at the close of each hoary lifetime, a lifetime 
which six times repeated w^ould have reached from 
creation to the present hour ; at the close of each, the 
lives of Adam and Seth and Enos and Jared, and 
Methuselah himself, adding this brief epitaph, ' And 
he died,' ' and he died /' 

Secondly. As this world is not our home, that home 
is ETERNITY. Our Scripturc speaks of man's 'long 
home.' The language in the original is even more 
impressive than in our common tongue, ' Man goeth 
to his home of ages.' It is the word bv which the 
ancient Hebrew measured and exhausted Fternitj/. 
Wonderful word ! Thought beyond the grasping of 
our finite ! How it stirs the deathless nature within 
us ! Born never to die ! To look upon ' the wreck 
of matter and the crush of worlds,' the scenes of the 
resurrection and of the judgment, the unfolding his- 
tories of retribution, the finished periods of- many a 
system of starry orbs populous with the subjects of 

2 



10 

the divine government, schools of nurture to the 
numberless candidates for immortality — to count the 
vast revolving cycles of duration, each accomplishing 
some distinct purpose of the great Sovereign, and yet 
feel no subtraction from that amazing vitality of our 
spirits never to be expended ! Our minds reel on the 
dizzy heights of such a conception ; and returning 
within themselves, repeat solemnly and wonderingly, 
* This is my nature — yonder Eternity is my heritage 
— within its boundless spaces is my home, — my 
long, my final home ! ' On the borders of the grave 
it shall be ours to repeat words which are become 
memorable now, — ' I still live ; ' and when the out- 
ward tabernacle is shattered, the viewless spirit 
mounting on long-fettered pinions shall say again, 
though mortal ears lose the utterance, ' I still live ; ' 
and in the distant ages, unmeasured by seasons and 
centuries, again express the consciousness of such an 
ever vital being, ' I still live ' — 'I shall live forever.' 
No man can make such meditations the frequent 
guests of his thoughts, without being warned and 
profited by them, comforted, elevated and ennobled, 
and helped to a juster estimate both of things earthly 
and fading, and things heavenly and eternal, — the 
littleness of all that concerns the body, which is dust, 
the price and worth of the soul, dowered with im- 
mortality ! 

My third remark is, — The race is moving to this 
' Home of Eternity.' Suppose one could stand on some 
mighty mountain height, that should give to his 



11 

sight the whole course of that great valley stream 
siirnamed in the forest tongue, ' T\\e father ofivafers.' 
Far up in the high northern latitudes, he sees it issu- 
ing from a little peaceful lake, that sleeps in the yet 
unbroken solitude. It murmurs quietly along, as if 
for a stroll of a summer's day. But it has left the 
lake behind forever ! It receives on either side the 
bounty of tributary rills ; and with a swelling current 
still flows onward. It leaps down the rocky walls 
that intercept its course, marking another stage of 
its returnless advance. From the great mountain 
chains, a thousand miles remote eastward and west- 
ward, come other rolling floods to mingle within its 
channel ; and still he sees them flowing on together 
in the one main direction. There are windings and 
turnings in its progress. Now it lingers in the shade 
of the primeval woods ; now it skirts the base of 
either bluff; now it spreads out its broad expanse in 
the sunlight ; now it rushes through the narrowing 
gorges of the hills. It sweeps the skirts of great 
cities, and kisses the emerald margin of the prairies. 
But with all this loitering and dallying, it is in mo- 
tion still along the easy valley slopes toward the gulf, 
— always full, and always emptying itself, — passing 
away and ever renewed, — its ceaseless brimming tide 
setting steadily out into the insatiable sea. The scene 
might fitly represent to him the continuous flow 
and current of human life out of its cradle fountain 
into the great ocean of Eternity. From the garden 
home of man I see the one returnless course of the 



12 



race of Adam, onward and onward, down the ages, 
swelled by the populations of all lands ; a dark vast 
jDrocession, moving down the valley of time, like a 
flood of many waters, and with hoarse murmurs of 
meeting surges, and sweeping on to the gulf of ob- 
livion, the great sea of Eternity. Where are the 
generations of old ? Where are the kingdoms and 
empires of ancient renown ? W^here are the conquer- 
ing armies of storied fields 1 Where are the cities' 
crowds that shouted huzzas at the victor s return 1 
AVhere are the orators and bards, the sages and phi- 
losophers of historic fame 1 Where are the tribes of 
the deserts, whose myriads no lustrum ever counted 
— the mighty hordes that swarmed along the frozen 
north of a hemisphere — whose marches devoured 
every green thing 1 Our fathers, where are they ? 
and the prophets, do they live forever ? 

' The golden sun — 
The planets — all the infinite host of Heaven 
Are shining on the sad ahodes of Death 
Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread 
The glohe are but a handful to the tribes 
That slumber in its bosom. Take the wings 
Of morning and the Barcan desert pierce, 
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods, 
Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound 
Save his own dashings — yet the dead are there. 
And millions in those solitudes, since first 
The flight of years began, have laid them down 
In their last sleep. The Dead reign there alone ! ' 



13 

Go to the men of grey liairs, and ask them what 
testimony they can give concerning the ravages of 
mortahty. Stand with one of them in the church- 
yard of his native village, and watch, and interpret 
the silent tears that drop along the furrows of his 
face, as he passes from stone to stone. They who 
were boys with him in the spring of life ; companions 
of youthful sports and youthful adventures ; mates in 
the old school-house, and in moonlit-pastimes on that 
village green ; the maidens that smiled upon the joy- 
ous circles in which he mingled then ; they to whom, 
in those early days, he looked up with reverence and 
duty, the old men of his childhood's time : all these 
are sleeping around him there. He wanders alone 
amid the dimming record of their once familiar 
names, and pictures again to his eye, as he treads 
above their dust, the once full life that has there gone 
down to the grave. He himself, in his solitary age, is 
the most impressive monument, amid all those humble 
shafts, of the perishable nature of human ties, the 
mortality of all the kindreds of earth. 

And once more. The dejiartiire of man to his Jong 
home, leaves mourning behind. The dead who die, die 
not as the leaves of the forest in the frost of autumn, 
fluttering unwept to the ground ; nor as the old trees 
sink with the weight of years or snows, or before the 
wrathful tempest ; nor as the waves die on the shore, 
each unlamented by its fellows. They did not stand 
isolated and alone ; the life of each, exclusive and 
complete within itself. Such might have been the 



14 

constitution of things ; each man framed by the 
Almighty hand from the dust, owning no parentage 
but that Divine hand, and the bosom of his mother 
earth ; and unallied by domestic and social bonds to 
the hearts around him. But the dying are ' bone of 
our bone and flesh of our flesh.' Their life had 
fibres and tendrils that took hold of other lives ; such 
deep hold, so hard to disengage. When they pass 
away, there is a violent disruption of the ties w^hose 
strong linked cables went out in every direction, and 
had their riveted fastenings in the very quick of loving 
souls. At the grave of one, bends a widowed wife, the 
way beyond, to her sad eye, all desolate of human com- 
forts. At the grave of another, lean together a group 
of sons and daughters, orphaned of a father's care, a 
mother's tenderness. Over the little form of some 
sleeping babe, the slow tears fall from young parents, 
childless. That blooming maiden was the very light 
of life to the hearth which is darkened now, and there 
is henceforth now in that home, no harmony in music, 
and no fragrance in flowers, and no luxury but in 
weeping. That stalwart youth was the stay and staft' 
of infirm old age, that droops now, losing such sup- 
port, more heavily toward the tomb. That strong 
man was counsellor, teacher, provider, his laboring 
right arm the only bringer of daily bread to depend- 
ent womanhood and a troop of little ones, now enter- 
ing upon their desperate struggle for the poor right 
to breathe. And so it goes around all the circle of 
mankind. For every form arrayed in the white linen 



15 

of death's cold bridals, some other form, of husband 
or -svife, of father or mother, of parent or child, of 
brother or sister, is arrayed in the solemn sable, worn 
only for that one remediless loss, symbol to eveiy eye 
of the mourning that one relentless visitor. Death., 
leaves behind. And outside the walls of the stricken 
household, the range of grief sweeps often a wider 
circle. Friends and neighbors, not only in their 
kindly sympathies, but in the conviction of their 
own personal loss, in the passing away of one who 
has gone out and come in before them, and given 
back their salutations for many a year, and recipro- 
cated many a neighborly charity, and sat down by their 
firesides, and is henceforth to be missed from all the 
rounds where his life has touched and mingled with 
theirs — they are mourners too. And sometimes, a 
wide commimity, a whole nation, blends its voice of 
weeping at the tomb of one whom the nation has 
loved and honored, and looked to in the hour of 
need, and gloried in as the echo of his world-spread 
name came gratefully back to her welcoming ear. 
Such a mourning was that which convulsed the heart 
of the people, when the revered Father of his Country 
was borne to Vernon's sacred shade. Such a mourn- 
ing followed the Patriot of Quincy, the ' old man 
eloquent,' to the ancestral tomb. Such a mourning 
sighed through the land, as the tidings went forth 
that the Sage of Ashland had fallen asleep ; and such 
a mourning with never more heart-tenderness in it, 
never more warm tears that start unbidden, never a 



16 

deeper sense of personal bereavement and affliction, 
waters now the grass-grown mound in the old 
'Winslotv Grave Yard,' within which lies, 'all that 
is mortal ' — the words are from his lips — ' all that 
is mortal ' of the foremost man of his times. And so 
the truth is again illustrated ; not in the privacy of 
a household grief, not in the retirement of some vil- 
lage sorrow ; but in the high places of the land, and 
on a theatre broad as the country, whose magnificent 
dimensions are only outspanned by the large heart 
that folded it entire in his love, that ' Man goeth to 
his long home, and the mourners go about the 
streets.' 

Let us gather now closer within that central scene, 
around which all these reflections group and cluster. 
The chimes of midnight have died away on the ear, 
and the young morning of the Sabbath is ushered 
in — though the night still holds its reign. It is the 
chamber of death. There, on that pouch of death, 
lies that form, whose port and presence became so 
well the mighty crown of greatness it upheld. The 
marble of death is settling on that broad capacious 
brow, beneath which wrought and triumphed the 
grandest intellect of our country's history. The life 
hues are fading out from those lips, from which have 
dropped upon us through the times of a generation 
such great, earnest, massive truths. The voice seems 
altogether hushed, whose grand and majestic oratory 
was but the iitting garniture of the regal thoughts 



17 

that marched forth in their own kinghness and scep- 
tred power. A dimness creeping up from the shades 
of the valley veils that deep-set, full-orhed, glorious 
eye, that flashed its splendors upon senates, and 
mighty crowds led captive at his will. Powerless lies 
the hand whose lifted tokens shielded the sailor on 
the sea — the humblest son of the soil wherever he 
wandered — and cowed the hearts of despots and 
tyrants to earth's distant regions. The idol of so 
many souls — the victor in so many triumphs, more 
splendid than that of AVaterloo, in that wonderful 
and unparalleled combination of the statesman, the 
lawyer, the orator, the first man among men, — is on 
the threshold of the uplifted portals of eternity. 

We have followed the flight of that soaring mind 
in the marches of many an argument, w hose stepping- 
stones were set as the continents, in many a burst of 
eloquence, that swept every spirit with its resistless 
mastery ; but who can follow it now, as the ranges of 
the Infinite open around it, and the unseen becomes 
visible ! Its own proper wings, no longer clogged by 
clay, the shadomng wings of a great spirit departing, 
are unfolding — the earth-chords are wtII nigh sun- 
dered ; but the lips move yet once more — the failing 
heart rallies once again — and the legacy of last words 
is bequeathed to the watchers. Words that may well 
be called prophetic of an enduring place in the affec- 
tions of his countrymen — prophetic of an undying 
memory in the histories of earth — prophetic, let us 
hope, of a fadeless immortality. 
3 



18 

It is not mine, now and here, to attempt a rehear- 
sal of the crowding and eventful scenes of that life. 
It will add no laurel to that illustrious name to dwell 
upon it now in eulogies. And if I should say, I 
regret, with a keenness and bitterness of sorrow no 
one chapter in all our political history could ever 
inspire, that this hero of my boyhood's worship, and 
of later years, almost to the last, could not have seen 
his calling, to stand forth as the noblest Apostle of 
Freedom to the long-injured African, — to plead with 
that overmastering tongue, in that last strife, as in his 
long life before, the cause of the enslaved, — to give 
the truthful conscience of the North a victorious 
utterance in his own enchaining and conquering 
speech, — let none of you think I am less a mourner 
at that grave of Marshiield than you. And in speak- 
ing here, in this sad hour, and before your sad hearts, 
this most sorrowful protest, I do not impeach, as I 
have never been able to in my own heart, the j)at- 
riotism, purity, and self-sacrificing devotedness of the 
motive, that bore in my deep conviction such mourn- 
ful fruit. I dwell no more on this. I know there 
are two opinions on this great divisive issue ; and 
many of you as honest and conscientious, I am bound 
to believe, as those who diff'er from you, will count 
the very measure to which I have led' my own troub- 
led and afflicted thoughts, one of the crowning glories 
of that illustrious life. Be it so. We will hold no 
argument by this open grave. Thank God, this 
history has so much in which our feelings and 
convictions know no diversity. 



19 

Let us turn again to that closing scene. V^c look 
now to see whether the drooping shadow of that one 
earthly disappointment darkened the dying chamber. 
We look to see whether that towering intellect was 
its own sutlicient support in the mortal hour ; what 
that imperial mind sought out of itself, and the circle 
of its honors and triumphs, for comfort then ; what tes- 
timony those oracular lips gave forth to the verities of 
the Christian faith. And we find, I think, instead of 
shadows from earth or from eternity, the light of a 
Divine presence in that chamber — the colossal spirit 
weak in this as any sinful child of Adam, leaning 
upon the merits of Jesus Christ the Saviour and Lord ; 
the mighty tongue framing this simple but ever preva- 
lent prayer — 'Heavenlj/ Father, forgive my sins, and 
receive me to thyself, through Christ Jesus." And all 
is so calm, so tranquil, so thoughtful and self-pos- 
sessed within the horizon of that soul — there enter 
without distraction so many warm sympathies from 
the sphere of the earthly friendships and the ties of 
nature — such large-hearted, unselfish care — such 
fidelity of provident love for all who had come within 
the sphere of his cherishing affections, from the wife 
of his bosom down to the humble and fliithful ser- 
vants whom his own hand had released from the 
house of bondage ; there was such a reverent attach- 
ment to the Book of Books, oracles which were to 
him their own clearest asserters of their divinity; 
there was such a forsaking of all earthly refuges, 
when the soul grasped the heavenly in that burst of 



20 

speech : — ' Thy rod — thy rod and thy staff ! ' — and 
there are so many testimonies uttering themselves 
from the privacies of his past life, that the religious 
element was a more commanding, essential and vital 
element of his character and being than the world 
knew — such memorials of his wrestling intercessions 
with Heaven at the death-beds of loved ones in other 
days, — that we may hope, I am persuaded, that the 
serenity of those final hours did indeed breathe the 
very peace of God ; — and that that surpassing and 
peerless spirit, whose ruin should have been mourned 
like another ' Son of the morning, fallen,' is expati- 
ating already amid the amplitudes of knowledge and 
felicity, bounded only by the horizon of God's being. 

And gathering up now our closing lessons from 
this signal voice of Providence — Let it hush for a 
little the eager turmoil of party strife. God has 
come into the midst of these contentions to overawe 
our spirits. He makes us hear his august tread — 
he touches the actors with his hand — he disappoints 
human hopes, and deranges human plans. Shall we 
be so clamorous, in his presence, with our party cries, 
our rallying words \ Let us be still — and do rev- 
erence ! 

Our dependence on man is rebuked. We have 
leaned — the whole nation has leaned — upon that 
giant arm more than we knew, till it fell palsied by 
one mightier. Every American lias felt that the 
honor of this great llepublic was safe in the guard- 
ianship of that strong and vigilant care. We feared 



21 

nothing from any adversary, whether cuiming in di- 
jjlomacy, or resolute in self-interest, or bold in the 
right of the stronger. Over the seas, however the 
gale might blow and the billows foam, we have all 
felt we should have safe voyage in the majestic ship of 
state, while that skilful pilot-hand held the wheel. 
And what now 1 what but this ? God is the God of 
nations ; he allots destinies ; he liftcth up and casteth 
down ; he is our refuge and our fortress ; he only 
maketh us to dwell in safety. To him let us conmiit 
this great venture of the world's sole and last hope 
for the stability of free institutions. 

And in the history of this consummate greatness, 
let every youthful aspirant for an honorable and useful 
life, take courage and hope. Let him look away to that 
humble farm-house in that secluded village among 
the hills of the Granite State ; let him see that dark- 
eyed, frail-looking farmer's boy, plodding his way 
through those northern snows, for three or four 
privileged months of the year, to the migratory, 
often distant village school ; let him look in upon 
him in the winter evenings, conning by the dim light — 
the ruddy fire lending the page a brighter glow than 
the tallow taper — the columns of the Spectator, borne 
home from the village library ; and from that lowly 
beginning let him step to the magnificent contrast, of 
a greatness scarcely second to any in human annals ; 
and amid whatever obscurity, and hardship, and ad- 
verse early fortune, bend him more resolutely to his 
, task — hope lighting him on from the future. 



22 

And yet I hasten to evolve in this very connection, 
our next lesson, the emptiness of all earthly stations 
and honors. To be nobly, eminently useful, useful in a 
broad public sphere, if God please, this is a legitimate 
ambition. But to strive for earthly distinctions for their 
own sake, is the very weakness of folly. What com- 
fort can the gloss of such greatness administer in the 
solemn room, where human help gives over its last 
fruitless art X What is of price then and there in the 
soul's just judgment 1 What are all sceptres, for the 
hand lying nerveless in death's pale languor I What 
are all diadems, for the brow death's frost is chilling % 
What are all huzzas, for the ear listening for death's 
last whisper ? What is all royal purple, for the frame 
so soon to be shrouded in death's white livery % My 
friends, what had been the honors of the Presidential 
Chair to that faintly, fluttering heart, feeling after the 
rod of the Divine presence and comfort % Nay, if 
that merely civil eminence had been won, there would 
have lacked in our hearts something of that deep 
unspeakable tenderness with which now and hence- 
forward his memory shall be cherished ; a tenderness 
that constantly unmans us, and expresses itself, strug- 
gle as we will, in tears right from the heart's purest 
fountain. 

^V]lat ive do need in dying — and this is our final 
thought — is acceptance with God in the beloved. The 
preciousness of this assurance in that death-chamber 
at Marshfield, is the confessed and attested conviction 
of every record of the closing scene. It is echoed^ 



23 

and re-echoed by all the voices of the press. It has 
not been the utterance of churches and ])ulpits ; but 
of men of every fiiith, and of no faith, the land 
over. After such a confession, can these men ever 
again feather a shaft of malice or ridicule at the sim- 
ple doctrine of the cross — the humbling, but so con- 
soling truths of Christianity. Is there here and out 
of their own lips, no unanswerable argument for the 
one thing which is the soul's great, primal, last need, 
in setting forward to meet its God and Judire ? 

Oh, men, and fathers, and brethren ! let your timely 
vital union to Christ, seal your hope and stablish vour 
heart for that unannounced coming, — whose swift 
silent approach, like the tread of a thief in the night, 
must ere long flash its surprise upon you all ! 



39 W 



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